Hello World!

It has been four years and nearly five months since I lost my husband tragically and unexpectedly.  Is that a long or short amount of time?  It is both.  I just recently passed the milestone of being able to throw out some of his old toiletry items from under our bathroom sink.  Those that were in the shower at the time of his death are still there.  Am I holding on?  You bet I am.  He was the best thing that ever happened to me.  We were head over heels in love with each other.  I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.  I was thrilled to have found him and thrilled that he loved me as much as I loved him – that he chose me for his wife.  We had one of those rare loves that most people dream of, but never find.  Yes, I was lucky.  But to have loved that deeply and to lose my lover years and years, many decades before either of us expected, was to come to experience despair as I never knew it existed.  It has been four years and nearly five months and still every day I wish that I would die too.  There is an emptiness in my chest that time does not heal.  I do not know how emptiness can be heavy, but it is.  It is so heavy that it makes it hard to breathe.  The pain is no longer raw, but it is deep.  It is within every cell in my body.  I don’t cry the chest-heaving sobs that I used to, but I still get tears in my eyes nearly every time someone says his name.  My memories are many and precious, but memories are not enough.  I want him back.  I want to live the life that we had planned together.  I want his arms around me, his twinkling eyes teasing me, his strong presence by my side.  It has been four years and nearly five months and I am still lost.  I do not know how to move forward.  I cannot imagine what living many decades without him will be like.  And so, that is why I am writing this.  I write it for myself – to process my feelings.  But I also write it for you because although I feel like no one else could ever have loved as deeply or have lost as tragically, I know that I am not alone in my heartache.  Perhaps together, we can remember and celebrate our loved ones and also find a way to open the next chapter of our lives, in which the story continues without them.  My husband is a part of me and I will take our love and my memories of him with me forever and wherever I go.  However, that is not the same as having him here with me, not the same as writing “our” story in tandem rather than writing “my” story alone.